


Returning the Favor

by Nightheart



Series: The Wolf's Den [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Cunilingus, Cunimagicus?, F/M, How's a girl supposed to get any reading done?, Private headcannon's abound, Solas would totally do this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-16
Updated: 2016-11-16
Packaged: 2018-08-29 07:03:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,705
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8479744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nightheart/pseuds/Nightheart
Summary: Sequel to General Distraction. Merrill had thought their interlude in his office had been a one-time thing. Solas has other ideas.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Smut. Again, smut.

The library that the Dread Wolf kept on hand in the ancient ruin of his former palace-temple complex where he currently trained his agents (and also where he had invited Merrill to stay while she pursued her research in his library) was what she would have considered quite large, but the Master of the Manse had hinted that he considered it to be small indeed. It was mostly full of books for his agent's use; either for leisure-reading in his agent's off-hours, or books on how to improve their knowledge and skills to support thier training. There was, however, a smaller, private library built just off his personal suite that was filled with scholarly elven works. Solas apparently, kept the books in his "small" private library on hand for his when he did not have the time to visit what he called the Main Library. Merrill would very much have liked to visit this main library of his, but he said that visitation rights for her might be problematic. Still, the works he did keep on hand were more impressive than anything she had ever seen before in all of her life, and they were all written in true, ancient vallan.

The difficult thing about reading _true_ ancient elven works as written in the actual characters of ancient elven vallan was that, because the Elvhen (the encestors of modern-day elves) had been immortal with endless amounts of time to develop writing, the writing system they had created and used was... vast and incredibly complex. There were thousands upon thousands of different vallan characters, and their meanings could change according to context. Vallan characters corresponded to both individual sounds _and_ individual ideas, and the two often were not the same thing for a single word. An elven word for snow might have its own character, but it also might be written with two different characters whose ideograms meant "falling" and "ice," or "white" and "dream," or "drifting" and "crystal" all of which would have individual sounds divorced from the sound of the spoken word itself. Most of the words of similar sound were differentiated from each other by semantic detirminitives... but not always. Even simple scripts could become complicated when an author wanted to concentrate on aesthetics over plain meaning, and began substituting more beautiful characters of the same sound for the simpler ones.

Written vallan, as practiced by the ancients, consisted of well over _one hundred thousand_ distinct written characters, and at least that many _more_ combined characters. That was not even getting started on either their love of vallan characters as artwork, nor their fiendish love of subtle puns! A basic literacy in ancient elven began at nine thousand characters, a more nuanced understanding could be set at about fifty thousand characters, and fluency could only be said to be reached at say, seventy thousand or so.

This wasn't even getting in to the different "scripts," the font in which the ancients had used in forming characters, that they'd employed. Official documents and high-minded scholarly texts used simplified, slightly blockier characters, while artistic works tended to use a smoother "cursive" style of the characters, and different periods in their long history had favored different fonts over others. The Dalish had, over the centuries, only managed to recover and restore the knowledge of six thousand characters (most of which were in the clerkly script)... all of which Merrill knew due to her training as First. She had embarked upon a personal quest to learn all of the rest of the characters of ancient vallan so that her people could finally, accurately, restore the lost knowledge from what few documents they had managed to preserve or recover. Once again, she had cut herself off from her people, isolating herself to keep them safe while she ventured into the lair of the Dread Wolf himself. Or rather, that had been how she'd envisioned things when she'd first started out.

_:It turns out that the terrible and evil Dread Wolf is... well, not so dreadful from what I can see,:_ Merrill thought to herself.

When he had at first showed up at the edge of her camp, desirous of claiming the aruin'holm she still possessed, Merrill had chased him off with earth and lightning, but repeated visits, and some tea and calm discussion, had revealed that, far from being the dastardly trixter of legend, Fen'Harel was actually a polite, erudite scholar with only a mild penchant for spy-keeping and military strategy. Since Merrill offered no advantages in either category, she had felt somewhat safe in taking him up on his generous offer of using his personal library to further her own research.

_:He's actually been rather nice about the whole thing,:_ Merrill reflected to herself.

He'd given her access to his private stacks and had been generous in recommending volumes of vallan primers for beginners, as well as simple poems and works that children had read in Arlathan to come to a better grasp of the characters. He'd even offered to teach her how to write them properly, as the brushstrokes of the ancient characters all fell into a particular pattern that the Dalish had not managed to uncover! Far from being mean or cruel, Fen'Harel seemed to delight in her scholarly interest, and encouraged her questions. He could at times come off as pedantic or condescending, but Merrill was rather accustomed to condescension. Even her closest friends tended to treat her like a foolish and naive child most of the time. Even Aveline had called her stupid, though Merrill chose to see it as criticizing her decisions rather than her intelligence. Merrill generally tended not to let their slightly superior attitude bother her for she knew that they cared about her and just wanted her to do well. She hadn't realized how much it had privately rankled her until she'd met someone who treated her like something more akin to an equal. Here, at last, she had found someone who saw her own views on magic and the Fade and Spirits as being somewhat enlightened, rather than an indication of foolishness, blindness or naivete. It was refreshing to have someone who agreed with her and encouraged her to learn and investigate and grow her knowledge, rather than look for ways to tell her she was wrong. It was nice to spend time with someone who supported her interest and called her curiosity healthy rather than destructive.

_:Of course... it seems that I have developed something of an infatuation for him,_ : she thought ashamedly.

She couldn't _help_ it! He'd been nothing but kind and encouraging of her work and her curiosity. He'd helped with her studies and encouraged her to try out a few of the new ideas she'd een working on. Merrill had come to find him attractive in a very refined, _elven_ sort of way. His intellect and vast knowledge combined with a classically elven physique had been an irresistible combination for her. She'd known it was wrong, and that her people would condemn her for falling prey to the Dread Wolf... but she was already condemned anyway. She was judged either way she went, so if she was going to be judged she might as well have her little desire for him settled and done with.

_:I still can't believe I actually went **through** with it!:_ Merrill thought with a blush.

She hadn't planned it out, aside of perhaps an idle fantasy to two (or maybe more). She'd honestly never thought she'd ever find the nerve to overste her courtesy as a guest in his home, but the opportunity had presented itself unexpectedly. Impulsively, she'd decided that audacity had always reaped her far more benefits than self-effacement ever had (after all, without audacity she never would have solved the Eluvian or gone on any of her adventures outside of her Clan) so, she'd went for it. She'd gathered her courage and played her hand.

_:And oh! What an experience it was!:_ she thought with a delightful tickle in her lower belly.

Pleasuring herself couldn't begin to compare to what it had been like to please and be pleasured with him. None of her fantasies had contained the delightful heat or the musky scent of him, or the way his flesh had filled her mouth and slid warm and wicked against her tongue. She'd never imagined the crackle of his magic over her body, caressing her in secret places she'd never have thought to seek for herself, or the salty-earthy taste of him in her mouth, or the warm, wet salty-sweet spurt of his seed down her throat. The whole experience had been a banquet of new pleasures and sensations in her rather enclosed and isolated little world. They were sensations she would tresure in her memory,cherishing when the time came for her to move on again.

_:But he surely didn't seem to care for it much,:_ Merrill thought to herself with self-recrimination at what must surely have somehow been a very poor showing for herself.

After all, she had no actual experience in the art of pleasuring a man, just what she'd read in the racy smut that she'd purchased in Kirkwall. She hadn't even gotten to try any of her hard-won dirty spells that she'd managed to sneak off from Ander's grimoires one night when he'd been sleeping! It was fairly clear to her from Solas' rection to thier interlude that her clumsy attempt at seduction had _failed_ to impress. He was probably glad her clumsy fumbling was finished with.

_:And look at me, just trying to impress the Dread wolf of all people!:_ Merrill thought with dismay tinged with shame.

Her mother and clan would both be ashamed of her. The Dalish phrase for criminal was "Fen'Harel ar ghilan"or led by the Dread Wolf. Merrill couldn't even imagine what they would call someone who was a great deal more than merely led on by him. She was willingly and willfully pursuing him. She couldn't help how she felt though. She _liked_ him. He was kind (if a little arrogant), knowledgeable (if a little condescending about it), and intelligent (if a little too inclined to flaunt that intelligence). Merrill had weathered worse from people she cared about, so a mild sort of disapproval from him was not bound to put off her growing infatuation with him.

_:This is dreadful, my family would be ashamed, my Clan would drive me off, and I would surely be exiled from the Dalish were I not already excommunicated. And yet, I have no say in the matter. The heart does as the heart does, and I might scream at the storm as much as I want, I know I will still get wet. Best to simply let matters take their course and be done with it. If I'm lucky I'll have a few nice memories to carry with me after the storm has passed.:_

Merrill had resigned herself to her inconvenient feelings. There was no point in fighting her feelings for him. She was just going to let her infatuation run its course. Just as with Hawke, her affections would bud, and then blossom into beauty for a time, then wither away in the face of his disinterest, leaving only the thorns behind.

_:I was strong enough to weather it once, I can be strong again,:_ she told herself.

There was no way she knew of to control how her heart fluttered when she caught sight of him, nor to stem the rising tide of affection she felt when he complimented her for her progress or her fine skill at observation and attention to detail. Thinking of his tall broad shoulders (for an elf!) was enough to make a tingle at the tips of her nipples, and she'd had more than several fantasies involving those delicate, long-fingered artist's hands of his. Her feelings were impossible, really! But she couldn't deny them either. She knew she was the worst kind of fool for it...

_:But I've been a fool for lesser things certainly,:_ she thought with resignation.

Right then she was in a pit of self-recrimination over the way he'd reacted (or rather, _failed_ to react!) to her incredibly forward and daring advances in his office. He'd treated her like a much younger and slightly foolish colleague who'd made some sort of social faux paus rather than a potential frolicking companion or even a desirable woman. He hadn't rejected her outright, but it had been pretty clear to her that he wasn't terribly interested in the possibility of any future frolicking.

_:He did not ask me to leave, which is good,:_ Merrill tried to rally her spirits. _:So maybe he doesn't find me unattractive... just not desirable in a sexual way.:_

She sighed dejectedly to herself. No-one _ever_ looked at her that way. She should be used to being all but invisible to romantic interest by now. Hawke had seen her like a little sister, and no-one else had ever even seemed to glance twice at her. Certainly there hadn't been any offers. Her Clan's disinterest in her (after getting her vallasliin) was somewhat understandable; she was First and would be Keeper and thus lived a bit apart. No City elf had looked at her with anything remotely resembling attraction so far as she could tell, and Merrill just wasn't good enough at picking up on social cues to be able to read when someone might be trying to subtly hint at a possible interest in her.

Merrill gave up on trying to cheer herself up about the miserable failure that was her lovelife (or rather, the lack thereof) and set the book she was not reading back down on the pile of books accumulating in the litle reading nest she had made for herself. It had a comfy piece of furniture that was like a cross between a bed and a chair for the long hours of reading rather than being hunched over a desk, and a table at just the right distance to keep from accidentally spilling food or drink on her accumulated treasures, and it had a very cleverly-shaped lamp that beamed brilliant steady light over one shoulder without causing that distracting candleflame-spot out of the corner of one eye. Merrill decided she'd been sitting for too long, and perhaps a little walk back among the shelves would soothe her and turn her thoughts away from the endless cycle of mortified recriminations and helpless infatuation her mind was currently cycling around in.

_:Maybe I'll find something interesting to read as well,:_ she thought to herself. _:I am here to **work** , not moon about like a lovesick da'len half my age over someone who's not interested in me anyway.:_

And she was doing it again. Merrill stood and walked away from her reading nook, picked a direction at random, and started walking. While she wandered through the shelves, she let her eyes flicker over the complicated vallan characters on the spines of the books, embossed in lettering that seemed to pick up ambient light and glow like moonstones from the dark, leathery covers of the books. She was able to read one or more of the vallan characters on the spines of maybe one book every other _shelf_ (and the shelves were tall and wide). However, one book out of every shelf was actually a vast improvement on not being able to recognize a single character no matter how far she walked or how many books she looked at... which had been the case when she had arrived.

_:Progress Merrill!:_ she forced herself to feel delighted when she found a book that she could read nearly all of the characters on its spine and actually recognize what it was about at first glance.

The spine said that the book was entitled "Spirits and Swords, an (something something) Path" or maybe that was wander or aravel? No, no it looked like the character for direction now that she looked at it. The radical was root and not grass and it had one of those swizzlely looking lines, rather than the curved backwards-J-shaped dividing stroke. Merrill pulled the book off the the shelf and brought it over to a nearby resting podium, instead of dragging it all the way back to her reading nook. She was only planning on having a quick look through it to see how much of it she could read and how much more she still had to learn before fluency came to her.

Merrill had learned that she could narrow down the options of what the work might possibly be about by analyzing the font that the vallan were written in, categorizing the script by era and by style would often tell her more about the work in question and enable to to start translating it better.

_:Well, the style isn't the swoopy kind that the artists all used for their artwork-writing,_ : Merrill could see at first glance. _:So it's probably not poetry or Varric-type books, if they actually had Varric-type books in Arlathan.:_

The Dalish did not have Varric-type books; they wouldn't waste the space in their arravel or the paper and ink (and time!) to write down and preserve something so frivolous when there was the serious work of restoration and lore-preservation to concentrate on, first! Merrill had read and liked Varric's books, however, and felt it a great shame that, if the Dalish ever produced a storyteller like her dear friend, he would be relegated to telling variations on the same old stories to the clan rather than being allowed to make up new stories to be enjoyed.

_:It's not the same sort of plain, blocky-looking characters that the clerks used for official documents either,_ : Merrill thought concentrating on trying to figure out the contents of the book.

_:The characters are sharp and neat, the general spikyness of them probably means that this is the style favored by scholars and instructors. So it's some sort of educational tract perhaps?_ :

Merrill skimmed down the first page, trying to recognize even one character to help her in her puzzle. A number of them, while very similar to vallan characters she had learned recently, were not _exact_ matches, so they could quite literally mean _anything_. Vallan weren't like the letters of shemlen language where, if a word was off by a letter or two, a person could infer the correct word by aural cues. So frustrating! Merrill turned the page and kept looking, her eyes flicking over the neat lines of beautifully complicated script, hoping to find a match.

She was shaken out of her examinations by the sound of the door to Solas' private library opening and shutting behind him. Merrill turned back to her book, assuming that he was probably there to fetch out some tome from the shelves for his own researches, and probably wouldn't want to be bothered by her right then. Or maybe she'd just rather not have to look him in the eye at the moment, that could be part of it. Either way, she turned back to the mystery of puzzling out the words in her own book. She continued scanning down the page, determinedly ignoring his footsteps echoing through the shelves of the library.

_:Ha!:_ she made a little noise of triumph in her throat.

She recognized the character for enalsaliin, which meant "victory" in elven. She tried looking at the characters surrounding the word, hoping she might get a clue as to the rest, but... no, nothing. The significance of them eluded her yet, they were simply too advanced for her to grasp. Not one to give up after a single defeat, Merrill kept looking. She saw enalsaliin twice more, but after five pages did not recognize any other characters. She sighed to herself, feeling a little bit disappointed.

_:I've made progress, but there's still so much more to learn!_ : she thought to herself.

Her reverie was interrupted by a soft, throat-clearing noise. She glanced up in surprise to see her host standing at the end of the short aisle leading back into the little nook she'd found.

"What is it that you are reading?" he inquired.

Merrill's heart leaped up into her throat. Her host looked so very handsome standing there framed by the light, the fur of the pelt he wore as amntle on one shoulder gleamed softly and his tall, correct frame seemed to tower even at a distance. Merrill's admiration of him was diminished by the embarrasment she felt at pressing her affections where they were clearly not wanted, and she worried she might have committed some sort of unwritten infraction, poking around among his books.

Merrill quickly held the book up against her chest, almost like a shield between them, to show him that she was being diligent in her own work.

"I-I was just taking a small break from my studies, a walk for some exercise," she explained hurriedly. "I wanted to know how far I'd come, and if my work was improving my skill at all? So I looked at the titles on the spines and... this was the first book I'd found where I recognized nearly all of the characters I'd learned so far."

_:Creators Merrill, you are babbling like a ninny, please shut up!:_ she thought at herself.

"I see," he said simply and Merrill couldn't tell if she'd offended him by poking back further in his books or if he was merely amused by her.

_:He probably thinks you're a moron!:_

"Um... I guess I'll return to my studies then," she said, bowing as she might have to her own instructor and moving to go past him.

Her cheeks were threatening to burn and she rather wished that the ground would open up and swallow her. Well she supposed she could cast spells to make that happen, but that would have certainly looked odd if she'd tried it.

"A moment, if you please," he said.

Merrill froze. He held out his hand peremptorily for the book. Merrill gave it to him, unable to look him in his handsome face. He glanced at the title with  interest.

"You said you recognized most? Not _all_ of the vallan?" he questioned her. "Which ones did you recognize?"

"Ahh... that character there is one of the words for "sword," she said as though she were a da'len again, reciting her lessons for her Keeper. "It's vallan is comprised of 'edge' and 'purity.' That other one means Spirit, but it's one of those characters that's made of three different characters combined. Under the radical is heart, or rather, center of emotion... or um, it's more like..."

She faltered, not knowing which word would best describe the concept.

"The modern word "will," would be more accurate, but all are in some essence, correct," he told her. "Shae" is a word that encompasses all of those things. But go on, the rest."

"Left of the dividing stroke is 'reflection' combined with 'self,' and right of the diving stroke is 'other' combined with 'inner' and the combination of radical and dividing stroke forms one of the words for 'magic.'"

"Good so far," he approved. "You show a finely trained memory and an intuitive grasp of concepts. I would expect nothing less from someone of your talent."

Merrill flushed again at the praise and felt the need to qualify it, as she hadn't managed to do things perfectly.

"I hadn't gotten all of the vallan," she admitted. "This one here looks like path, but also journey. It's not vir however?"

She made it a question.

"Vir is the _common_ term," he said. "This word is shenmiu, it's more nuanced and it generally was used to refer to a particular martial discipline. Shenmiu Dirth'ena enasalin, or shenmiu elgar'eaisa, or shenmiu benal'nadas. A category for different specialties of martial magic usually."

"Oh," Merrill said. "So this book is about swords? And spirits?" Merrill's cheeks reddened further, partly in frustration at her own ignorance.

"Nevermind," she said quickly. "It's clearly too advanced for me to read.. _Yet_. I'll set is aside for now and when I've learned more, I can come back and conquer it. The book I mean, probably not the disci- the shenmiu."

The Dread Wolf smiled slightly.

"Given your very great willpower, it would almost not surprise me if you did learn the discipline once you set yourself to its study. It might even suit you, though it's difficult to imagine you as a bodyguard."

"Oh, is that what this dirth'ena enalsaliin is for? Bodyguarding?"

"The masters of the art often trained the elite bodyguards of the nobility," he said.

"Hm," Merrill said, thinking of the one person she knew who might appreciate the work... or not. It could be difficult to tell with Fenris what might pique his interest and what might cause him to chuck a heavy tome or a months worth of work back at her head and spew insults at her back.

"Maybe I'll copy it out and take a manuscript back with me," she mused aloud. "I could translate it into common for him."

"For whom?" Solas demanded.

His tone wasn't quite sharp with her, but there was a certain note of demand about it and Merrill wasn't certain what had piqued his curiosity.

"I know and elf who has a certain sort of magic about him, though he doesn't practice magic per se. He was trained as a elite bodyguard for a Tevinter Magister. He's been... experiencing troubles and it's made me worried, all of us are worried really."

"I see. And he is, I suppose, a close friend of yours, this bodyguard?"

Merrill's mouth quirked to the side of its own accord as she frowned. "A close friend" was not precisely how she might have described the temperamental mage-hating Fenris, but she really lacked any better descriptions for him. She _would_ have have been his close friend if he would have let her, but he despised her for pretty much everything she was and held dear. Sadly, because of this, though they might always have the ability to call upon one another's assistance, they were not close or even on friendly terms.

"It's a little bit complicated I suppose," Merrill said.

She tried not to feel a bit self conscious as she noticed his eyes resting on her almost meditatively, as though he might peel back the top of her head and peer within to see her thoughts.

"He was your own bodyguard then, I take it?"

Merrill blinked at him in surprise, at first not even able to entirely comprehend what he'd said, the notion behind his words being so very aliean to her.

"What? Fenris? Guard me?" she siad, trying hard not to laugh at the very thought of it. "He'd as soon throw me to the darkspawn as look at me most days. No, he's fine in a fight if he has a personal interest in it, like when we're chasing down slavers, but he certainly doesn't have any interest in seeing me safe for myself. I think our friendship with Hawke is the only reason he hasn't left me to get torn apart by something nasty on those trips out we do."

"And yet, you would study to understand, then copy and translate an entire book to help him," Sols pointed out and Merrill very much wondered why he was belaboring the odd point.

"Yes," she said. "If I'm going to study to learn the script anyway, it might as well benefit someone besides myself. Fenris isn't a bad person, a tad temperamental, but you get used to it after a while."

"It is a great deal of trouble to go to for someone who is merely a friend," Solas said.

Merrill sniffed dismissively. This man had clearly **_not_ ** grown up Dalish.

Clensing an eluvian shard of taint was "a great deal of trouble." Reconstructing an ancient magical artifact of immense power based on study of it, partially preserved lore, and the occasional quasi-useful hint from a suspicious Spirit was "a great deal of trouble." Copying down and translating a tome to add to the continuing knowledge and understanding of the People was merely the fulfillment of Merrill's duty, and not at all an onerous one. Besides, if what he'd said was right, Merrill herself might even benefit from her translation.

"I should hardly think so," Merrill said, brow furrowing in puzzlement as she turned her head back down to the book she'd borrowed from him and struggled to translate the next line of text.

She was certain that Solas could hear her heart pounding with awareness when he leaned over her to peer at the passage she was struggling to parse her way through. She could feel his magical aura, a light pressure against her skin like the brush of wind, press softly against her own. She knew that Solas was suppressing his own great spiritual pressure so that she would not be made uncomfortable. She had heard it hinted at by other Ancient Elves in the training complex, that the Dread Wolf had a spiritual pressure, when he cared to unleash its fullest might, that could feel like standing under the spout of a great torrential flow pounding down so hard that it could knock one flat, and that it was as bright and intense as the sun in the desert at midday.

She had felt only the most subtle of brushes however, swirling and twining through the flowing fluctuations of her own comparitively weak and meagre mage's aura. She tried to ignore the shivery arousal-feeling that the soft touch of his spiritual pressure against her own woke in her. It felt oddly intimate, this ephemeral not-touch his magic had. It slid against her own and caused resonant shivers of sweet, semi-erotic sensations to echo through her own magic and thrumm enticingly under her skin. She was certain that, after his continuing disinterest in her, he meant nothing by allowing his spiritual pressure to perform what felt like a caress against hers, it was probably nothing more than the last, trickling remainder of his own great spiritual force that he could not entirely suppress merely leaking out of him the way the sun radiated light. He surely did not mean anything erotic by the way he sent shivery phantom touches over the sensitive nibs of her breasts and along the sides of her neck as he pressed in closer to read over her shoulder.

"Jinzen'an," he murmured, softly in her ear. "Hanalasiael shuiyui elgar'in mi'aravel."

She felt her heart leap up into her throat as the shockingly intimate feeling of his words breathed in low tones right against her delicate ears, and she very nearly flinched away from him by reflex. The sound of his voice soft and low so close to her and the softness of his breath on the sensitive shell of her ear nearly made her feel weak-kneed. She couldn't seem to speak or move or do anything but stand there like a halla in the sight of a wolf as her face flushed redder and she enjoyed the scent and feel of his nearness like an idiot.

"The place of the inner spirit journeyed to reach through the mirror-moon when one's inner-Self manifests the Soulblade," he added. "Well, it's a great deal more complicated than that, but I think perhaps, that I have said enough. I have seen your work, and I know you to be clever in surprising ways. If your current-era Knight Enchanters can manage to manipulate other forces to create an effect that is similar to this discipline in the details, though of course utterly lacking in the essentials, it would perhaps be dangerous, for yourself and for others surrounding you, if you pursued this subject further without appropriate instruction."

Merrill made a noise of protest when he gently took the book from her hand and closed it, placing it back on the shelf out of her reach.

"I'm not afraid, you know," she protested, now feeling indignant that he was treating her with the same slightly superior condescension that everyone else in her life seemed to treat her with.

Don't study blood magic Merrill, you can't be trusted to know your own limits and respect them. Don't seek out Spirits Merrill, you're too trusting and they'll take advantage of you. Don't even try to repair that eluvian Merrill, you don;t know what you're doing and can't be trusted to learn.

"Yes, I can see that," he said calmly. "I can also see that you dislike being told no."

"Well, it's just that I hear it so very, very _often_ ," she responded hotly now, less inclined to be attracted to him and more inclined to be angry.

She had thought that _he_ , at least, understood! But here he was acting like everyone else, thinking he knew what was best for her regardless of her own wishes. He was looming over her, too, one arm leaned against the shelf above her head and the other pressed against the bookshelf near her hip, trapping her in a loose cage. Despite his height, his face felt like it was merely inches from her own and his spiritual pressure this close was an almost palpable sensation. It tasted of the air in a pine forest after a fresh snow and the heavy musky scent of it reminded her strongly of the taste of his seed in her mouth during their interlude in his office. Still, Merrill was not one to allow anyone to dictate to her, no matter of he was a Keeper or a god. She glared fiercely up at him, defiant of his strictures against whatever it was he'd just denied her the right to investigate.

" _Everyone_ tells me no," she continued. "My Clan, my Keeper, even my friends. And you know what? I'm _grateful_ to all those who tell me no. Because when they do, it leaves me no choice but to find my own way and do it all _myself_."

She wasn't expecting him to smile at her, nor was she expecting his soft quiet chuckle and look of genuine amusement. It wasn't a condescending sort of amusement either, like people often got Merrill was trying to parse out what strange new custom she'd stumbled across the wrong side of this time, but it was genuine amusement, like she'd said something that he actually found delightful.

He murmured something in Elvhen, Merrill only caught the word for "era" and "year" and "spirit" and the rest of it was nothing more than beautiful-sounding noise to her.

"Does that mean you've decided to let me read the book?" Merrill asked him, trying not to be overly conscious of the fact that she was essentially trapped against a bookshelf with only mere inches separating them, and in the space between them their individual auras seemed to be frissioning against one another like colliding storm fronts, causing small, tingly lightning sparks of raw magic where their currents met and rubbed against each other.

Merrill wasn't sure how to classify the sensation of their individual personal magical fields touching and sliding against one another. It partly felt a bit like the bow of a fiddle making a soft hum of music, but strangely it was as if they both had two humming notes in different keys and they were slowly becoming more harmonious the longer they touched. The closer the humming notes matched, the greater the sensations thrummed along her flesh, tickling inside of her intimately. There was a familiar quality to it, like a wolfs howl in the distance, singing to call to its pack. His eyes were oddly captivating, on the surface they appeared as a pale blue ice blue color, like the sky just before dawn on a clear winter day, but deep within them roiled a storm of power that made her terrified and exhilarated all at the same time. It was somehow entrancing, and Merrill felt her mind sort of drift, the soft currents of magic pulling at her but where to she did not know.

Solas blinked and seemed to shake himself as though his attention had somehow wandered. He frowned slightly and Merrill wondered if she'd somehow made him angry with her, for his eyes had gone from a pale ice-blue to... she wasn't sure _how_ to describe it. They were sort of silvery-colored like light off a mirror, and they glowed a bit. It was eerie and more than a little disconcerting to watch. The glow faded slowly and his eyes turned back to an ordinary pale blue. The strangely enticing humm and the phantom caresses of his spiritual pressure cut off like a knife.

"Why is it that you are here, Merrill?" he asked abruptly.

He pulled back away from her a bit as well, so that he was not to close in her personal space. A bit taken aback by his sudden change of topic following so shortly after what had seemed like a promising situation for her to continue on to another pleasurable interlude with him, Merrill floundered for an answer and simply chose honestly as she always had.

"To learn," she said simply. "I thought that was fairly self-explanatory. I'm trying to regain the knowledge of ancient vallan."

"And what will you do with this knowledge, once you have it?" he questioned next, a strange sort of impatient distemper seeming to take hold of him.

_:Seesh, maybe it's not only just Fenris,_ : Merrill thought to herself, mystified as to his sudden turn in mood. _:Maybe **all** elven men are moody and temperamental, and some are just better at hiding it than others!:_

"Use it to help our people?" Merrill guessed.

"You sound uncertain," he snapped, as though he expected to catch her out in a falsehood of some sort.

"Well to be honest," she said with a small spark of irritation with him as it was not the first time he seemed to suspect her of duplicity. "I hadn't really given it much thought. It's mostly that..."

She shook her head a bit.

"Well, how many chances does an elf, much less one that has been _Keeper-trained_ , have to get at literally a _treasure trove_ of lost knowledge? And not just the books and scrolls, but the means to learn the lost words from someone who can speak them natively and truly know their meanings? I can't tell you how many times I've bemoaned the fact that so much has been lost all my life, and here I'm presented with a unique opportunity to recover more than just a little bit, I could recover a skill that could unlock so much _more_. As far as I'm concerned, I can fret about what to do with it _after_ I've learned it. I can't imagine using my knowledge of elvhen to hurt people, unless of course, it's slavers and they surely have it coming. So I suppose, once I've learned it, I would use it to help our people. But mostly... There's so many books here to read."

Merrill didn't even bother to hide her joy at the thought that someday, hopefully very soon, she would have mastered the keys to unlocking everything she'd ever wanted to know for all of her life, everything she worked hard and sacrificed to get to. She also didn't bother to hide her longing and frustration with the itme it was taking her to learn what she needed to know. In the short time she'd been his guest, she'd pushed herself to learn vallan after vallan, memorizing thousands more characters to add to the Lore of the Dalish, but her studies had only shown her how many, many more she had yet to learn. It was frustrating to have such uncountable treasure at her finger tips and be unable to reach it; like a starving orphan sitting underneath a table with a feast on it and being unable to eat any of it.

There appeared and unaccountable sort of softness in Solas' countenance and he murmured something in elven.

"What?" Merrill asked, requesting a translation of his words.

"You are a seeker of knowledge for its own sake," he said, quietly, seeming pleased with her.

Merrill truthfully didn't know how to reply to that. What else would one seek knowledge for if not for it's own sake? Her thoughts must have shown in her expression as clearly as the valla'sliin on her face, for Solas had another of those quiet, honest chuckles of his, the ones that made her heart flutter a bit against her will.

"It is more uncommon than you would think," he told her a bit sadly. "Most who seek knowledge, seek the power that it offers and _not_ as an end to itself. You're a rarer creature than you give yourself credit for, Merrill. Most who had walked your path would have already succumbed to its temptations, but _you_... your will..."

He looked like he might have said something but instead chose to remain silent.

"Well how could I possibly succumb to it's temptations, I'd like to know," Merrill said with some tartness. "If I have everybody around me always nattering at me about how corrupt I am eventually destined to become. Fenris especially, is always prating at me about it."

Solas' eyes unaccountably flashed white then back again so quickly that Merrill wondered if she'd imagined it. His spiritual pressure pushed against her with a greater firmness than before, like a seeking touch against her body here, and then gone so swiftly that Merrill wasn't sure she'd felt anything at all.

"That is the _second_ time you have mentioned this Fenris," he noted, with an eerily echoing quality in his voice, sounding like it came from deep in a well.

Merrill was reminded frighteningly of Anders and Justice but there did not appear to be any possessing Spirit there... but she felt somehow much more like a halla caught in the presence of a dangerous wolf. Instinct made her freeze, barely daring to move for fear he might pounce. She wasn't sure what he would do, she wasn't even sure he was dangerous, but she felt a tension in the air and she wasn't certain how to interpret it. She felt a strange sort of stirring within her, it wasn't entirely unlike it felt when she was sexually aroused, but there was something else to it. Her aura seemed to grow thicker, somehow, as it swirled about her. The feeling of it pressing back against his spiritual pressure felt more like the jolt of pleasurable sensations she got when she rubbed her thumbs against her sensitive nipples or ran a small current of magic down against her core to arouse herself when she was feeling "lonely." It felt exquisite. Curious as to how it worked she did it again, pushing out with a soft flare of her inner magefire past the binding-spells woven into her silk corset she wore underneath her body-sheath, to twine and caress against his own spiritual pressure.

Just as it had in his office when she'd taken him into her mouth, Merrill felt pleasing sensations like a strong current of water tickle against her nether lips, curling and stroking with electric sensations. She sighed hotly as her body tightened. She didn't know how it was happening, but she knew she didn't want it to stop. She allowed more of her inner mage-fire to leak out past her inner shields, twining and tangling with the soft flowing currents of his own, stroking against him and causing echoes of pleasure to ripple back into her.

"Fenhedis," he hissed closing his eyes and looking a bit like he was in pain.

Worried that she might have inadvertantly hurt him with her curious experimentation, she pulled her metaphysical fingers back as though he had just struck them with a willow switch. Merrill pulled her own mage-fire all the way back within her and raised up her inner shields properly, suppressing her aura as her Keeper had taught her to.

"I-ir abelas," she apologized, mortified. "I didn't mean... I-- I'm sorry."

Merrill jerked back out of his loose embrace as though she'd been burned, nearly stumbling clumsily over her own feet in her haste to put distance between them. Inwardly she chastised herself. Her Keeper had always warned her against letting her aura and inner magefire leak out, said it was dangerous, though she'd never said exactly why.

"Are you okay?" Merrill asked guiltily. "Did I hurt you?"

There was another small chuckle from back at the other end of the bookcase, though there was a different quality to this one, it seemed lower, throatier, almost like a _growl_.

"That tiny tickle? Hurt me?" he said with a small note of arrogance in his voice. "You would need another thousand of your lifetimes before such a thing would happen. Why are you all the way over there?"

"I think I should go," Merrill said sorrowfully backing toward the safety of her little study-nest that she'd made for herself. "I shouldn't have interrupted... whatever it was you came to do."

Merrill sat down on her little couch-bed-chair and blindly picked up a book with the intent of pretending to read it until he went back about his own business and discovered that the book she'd grabbed was one of her own notebooks. She wouldn't be reading one of her own notebooks, and that certainly wouldn't fool anyone! She reached for another book, a children's primer on vallan, and opened it to a random page. Merrill stuck her nose firmly into it and silently begged the ground to swallow her up. If he hadn't thought her quite silly before, he surely did now! Or worse, silly _and_ unable to control her own magical field properly.

_:Idiot! Idiot! Idiot!:_ she castigated herself. _:Why do you always ruin everything, Merrill?:_

She was so firmly concentrated on her own feelings of embarrassment that she wasn't paying attention to what went on around her, for she was caught surprised when Solas' hands grasped the armrests on either side of her comfy reading lounger and he leaned in over her. She hadn't even felt the air displaced by him nor had she sensed his aura nor had she heard a whisper of sound caused by his movement, he was simply _there_ as though materialized out of the shadows. Belatedly, a tug of wind blew in from behind him as though he had brought it with him. This time she could sense, rather than feel his spiritual pressure, its presence so lightened that it was more like a scent than a feeling against her own magical field. Merrill buried her nose even more firmly in her book, like a child hiding under the covers from the Dread Wolf, determined to ignore him until he went away.

He gently pressed one of his long, elegant artist's finges down on the top of the spine of the book she was hiding behind downward so he could look at the face of embarrassment and mortification that she was trying to cover up.

"You may correct me if I am wrong," he said with a slightly smug and amused note in his voice. "But I do not believe you will be able to study your vallan effectively if you continue to attempt to read them upside down."

Merrill just ducked her head down as though he'd struck her, so heavy was this latest mockery on top of everything else she was already feeling. She lowered her eyes into her lap and gave up. if she played dead surely like any other predator, he would leave her be when she ceased to be interesting. That was what the other children who had used to pick on her as a child had done anyway. Just in case, Merrill pulled back all of her magic safely behind her inner shields so that she wouldn't accidentally touch him again.

"You need not be so shy," he continued. "You were certainly bold enough earlier. Or is it that you regret the interlude that occurred between us in my offices? At _your_ instigation, I might add."

Merrill couldn't seem to find her voice, and she wasn't certain that she wanted to. It wasn't that she regretted it, precisely. She had wanted to _know_ him, to know what it felt like to _enjoy_ him, even though he wasn't interested in her. She'd loved the feel of him in her mouth, even deep back in the throat. She'd relished the taste of him on her tongue and if given an invitation she would happily taste him again. The sensations he'd woken deep inside her, the curl and release of magic sliding against her inner crevices like currents of pleasure then that sweet rushing stroke of release when she'd worked him higher and higher... it still woke her some nights, hot and achy with the memory of it, her body slick with need that went satisfied only with her own fingertips. It left her wondering how it would feel if he stroked her with those long beautiful fingers of his, seeking out and exploring her crevices.

"I see," he he said curtly, getting up as though to move away. "So you _do_ regret it."

Merrill's eyes flew up to his in panic as she grabbed his hand by reflex to make him stay and she shook her head violently in soundless, emphatic negation.

"Am I to play guessing games with you?" he said, sounding irritated with her.

"I... It's..." she tried, looking helplessly back at him, horribly awkward. "I don't regret it..."

"You know," he said idly. "In Arlath'an, if a woman made such advances on a man of my station, she would have been flogged."

Merrill looked at him in shock, both for his implication that he perceived her as having a vastly lesser rank than he himself held (she'd thought that he thought of them as more or less equals) and that he'd just implied that they had corporal punishment in the heavenly arlathan she'd heard stories of as a child. It just didn't seem to fit the tales she'd grown up with.

"Unless," he added, leaning closer into her and toying with a lock of her hair. "I were to return the favor."

Merrill looked back at him with a heady cocktail if delight, dismay and arousal. Did he really mean to put his tongue down there? Would he use dirty spells? What if she tasted bad to him? He looked her directly back in the eyes with a peculiarly focused look and Merrill had the strangest feeling that something in their dynamic had just shifted, as though somehow something had gone precisely the way he had wanted it to and now he was feeling quite triumphant and pleased with things.

"However, as you are a determined scholar," he continued, sounding strangely masterful and pedantic as the same time which wasn't something Merrill heard very often. "Far be it from me to interrupt your learning. But learning is often helped by a review, as it were."

Before she could ask him what he was about, he'd re-positioned her on her reading lounger, moving some of her books and stacks of notepaper out of the way, so that she was leaned further back. Merrill had always thought that the knot of her belt that kept her tabard closed was one of the more complicated elven knots to unravel, but he had it untied in a blink and pushed her tabard aside like a man dusting aside cobwebs.

"What... is _this_?" he demanded, sounding a trifle upset.

Merrill looked down where he was looking, worried that she had somehow managed to ruin things already and they hadn't even gotten started yet. Solas reached down a long, delicate finger to hook underneath the edge of her corset bottoms and pluck at the garment he took some mysterious sort of exception to with a frown on his face. He looked quite displeased with it. He placed his hand flat over her belly and then pushed his magic into the spells that had been woven into the silk of her corset, testing them. Merrill felt the spells _strain_ to accommodate his magical muscle-flexing.

"That?" Merrill asked a bit timidly. "That's just the corset that is used to sheathe my san'shii'an."

He looked at her with a look of horrified confusion, as though she had just said something he found disturbing in the extreme and Merrill looked blankly back at him, uncertain as to why he seemed to upset about the matter. So, she tried to clarify matters for him so he wouldn't be confused.

"I came into my power at a young age," she explained. "When I was six, years before most other children my age, I was born into a family with strong magical bloodlines. and when my power manifested so young, I was given this corset to wear by my mother when my magic began to show signs of a peculiar sensitivity. It shields my san'shii'an from overwhelming interference from the Fade. I can still draw magic like a normal mage but--"

"They've put a _muzzle_ on you!" he shouted. "That _thing_ you are wearing is blocking out your ability to properly commune with the Fade. It's no _wonder_ you appear so clumsy all the time, you're wearing a blindfold and trying to stumble around as though you can see."

Merrill felt offense rise within her once again once again at his clear insults, and she sat up and moved to pull her clothes back together. Clearly they were _not_ going to do this! It was bad enough that she was clumsy and no good at so many things, but he didn't need to insult her about it. Solas reached and caught her wrists when she moved to push him away for offending her. He seemed to realize that what he said was offensive for he visibly paused.

"My apologies," he said softly a moment later. "I should have realized that you would not know any differently. You cannot help the way you have been raised."

Merrill frowned back at him. That apology of his, while certainly genuine from his point of view, had _not_ been a whole lot better.

"Have you ever tried removing it?" he asked her, running a finger softly over its surface to test the spells woven into it.

Tiny jags of lightning skittered over the surface of her corset-cover in the wake of his fingers. A soft caress trailing along her skin as his magic touched hers and her own magic hummed pleasantly in reaction to it.

"Only when I bathe," she said honestly. "I can't handle it off me for very long. Everything... _presses_ in on me, like... I _feel_ too much. I'm afraid of demons too. I'm not a Dreamer like Feynriel was, whatever is wrong with me doesn't give me powerful magic like he had, or has, I'm not sure what happened to him actually."

"There is nothing wrong with you," he said sharply. "If anything, there's something very _right_ with you."

Merrill looked at him in confusion but he had turned his attention to examining her corset. He made a small noise of triumph when he at last found the lacings to it and moved to loosen it in preparation for taking it off from her. Merrill pulled away, startled.

"There is no need to be frightened," he said soothingly. "Surely you could not have expected to enjoy yourself with your clothes on?"

Merrill hesitated. That had always been a bit of a conundrum for her, and part of the reason why she had never been more bold in pursuit of her carnal desires. She was afraid that stripping herself of her sheath would make it so her unusual magical field would not longer be dampened, and that she might inadvertently cause harm to the other person.

"Won't you get hurt?" she asked shying away skittishly when he reached for her corset-laces again.

"My dear," he said sounding quite condescendingly amused. "Unless this sheath of yours is holding back a spiritual pressure that moves like a mountainside, I assure you there is little your magical field could do against mine."

Still feeling uncertainty and misgiving Merrill allowed him to untie the strings and loosen the protective garment. Once the binding spells were loosened, even slightly, her awareness expanded outward in a dizzying and disorienting rush. Colors looked brighter and took on an extra dimension, shining with a sort of light that made them seem almost alive. Sounds became more acute but not only that there came with them this sort of hum, underlying everything. It was both pleasant and unpleasant, and the tone and pitch of it changed in unpredictable ways. Merrill wasn't certain whether she lied or disliked it, but she couldn't block it out so it seemed like she might find it annoying after a while. Her sense of smell also changed, there was this sort of mist-like underscent she couldn't place that was also variable and neither overly unpleasant nor entirely pleasant. Her spiritual pressure rolled out from under her shields, expanding outward and brnging her entire hosts of new sensations she did not know how to process nor categorize. It was like every sense rolled into a single disorienting mass. It felt like the ground heaved under her and she felt dizzy, like everything kept trying to move all around her and she couldn't make sense of it. Merrill felt her body weave drunkenly.

"There now," a gentle voice said.

A warm, secure feeling of presence enveloped her and the world began to steady once more. She felt her aura reach out to orient herself on this new anchor as the rocking, sea-sick feeling stabilized at last. colors toned down a bit, but still retained that extra something, her senses no longer batted her this way and that with scattered, untamable impressions.

"I can't..." she gasped, trying not to feel sick.

"You _can_ , it's alright," he reassured her, allowing her to cling to him. "Trust yourself. Trust your own feelings."

Merrill shut her eyes tightly as the inevitable headache caused by the rush of sensation and overwhelming magic started to blossom behind her eyes. Dazzle-stars crawled through her sight and the outlines of everything began to shift, breaking apart and coalescing back together. She felt her san'shii'an, her inner gateways of magic begin to tremble and shiver, the magic of the Fade threatening to rush around her seals and flood her body's meridians, the energy flow-paths that she used to harness her magic and make it hers. If the flood came, the magic would burn.

"N-no..." she gasped, trying to tighten her control over her meridians.

Merrill pushed energy out into her aural shield, hoping to block out the flow of mana from the outside so that she could hopefully lessen the weakening of her shields but the currents of ambient magic still pushed and pulled at her, making her feel small and helpless, like a leaf in a stream's current.

"I can't," she gasped, dizzy and disoriented from the rush of disjointed impressions.

"Hm," he said after a long moment. "I believe I see your trouble. No-one has taught you to ground and center your magic. I suppose with the jinsan'shii the way it is, there is not reason why what I would consider to be the groundwork of magic would ever need to be taught, since your people already lack the prerequisite sensitivity to the perception. Except for you, it seems."

"Can I put my sheath back on now?" Merrill begged. "I think I'm going to be sick."

Indeed, she did feel rather a lot like she had on the ship as it had crossed the Waking Sea to Kirkwall during the Blight.

"Of course, my poor dear," he said, his voice sounding sympathetic. "Here, let me help you."

In a moment, the awful, disorienting rush of dizzying and confusing sensations faded as he replaced her sheath in its proper position, sealing up her san'shii'an, and the world seemed to right itself again. Merrill then realized she was clinging to him like an anchor in a storm.

"There," he soothed. "All better?"

Merrill nodded as the last of the awful dizzy-sick dissipated as her sheath-assisted control over her body's meridians re-asserted itself. Merrill allowed her head to rest against him, enjoying the steadying, soothing feel of his spiritual pressure against her body and magic.

"A question for you, if I may," he said after a long moment.

"You may ask," Merrill said, allowing her tone to imply that she might not choose to answer.

"You say you were born with this so-called "magical peculiarity" of yours, and yet... you left your clan to take up the supposedly dangerous practice of blood-magic. Why did you not simply explore the bounds of your natural gift?"

"I tried that," Merrill answered, still feeling a little bit vulnerable and off-kilter. "It doesn't make my magic any more powerful. In fact, I can't barely use it at all. I couldn't last a full day without my sheath when I tried it. Magic poured through my inner seals and flooded through my meridians, but I didn't have any way to control it. I felt like I would burst apart at the seams! And then there was those awful headaches. I got one so bad that I couldn't move for an entire day afterward."

"Of course you did," he said as though this were common sense. "Oh, wait. Of _course_ you did."

His repetition made it sound as though he'd realized that his agreement with an obvious point to him was not anything near obvious to her. He gave her a look that could only be described as pitying, and Merrill frowned right back at him for it, insult returning. She neither needed nor wanted his pity!

"If you will excuse me," she said, trying to gather the tattered remains of her dignity about her. "I would like to return to my studies."

She sat down decisively, picked her book back up, and put it up in front of her face, obviously intending to ignore him until he went away. The Dread Wolf Solas did not seem to take the hint. Instead he sat down beside her and reclined back on her lounging couch where she would have been comfortably reading if he were not taking up the whole thing. A moment later she felt a soft, pressing tickle of energy against her aural field, a sensation of another person's spiritual pressure sliding softly against her own, sending resonating shivers along her magical field and down into her meridians. It was a rather more intimate version of someone sending a soft, caressing fingertip right up her exposed back and neck.

"I beg your pardon!" Merrill snapped at him, knowing him immediately for the culprit.

That sort of behavior, though possible only with other mages, was the province of _lovers_.

"Do you not like it?" he questioned her in a baiting tone.

"That is hardly the issue here," she replied a bit primly, trying to hide her flushed face as she admitted to herself that she had liked it very much indeed. "And I... I think it would be best if I continued my work."

The protest sounded feeble, even to Merrill. She didn't really want to go back to her books and her solitary studies, she wanted a little more of that lovely feeling he gave her when he did that thing with his pressure. She felt her aura already blossoming outward, reaching out to entangle her currents with his. The shivery slide of note-like hum as her own magical resonance instinctively picked up on some of the nuances of his and adjusted to match felt exquisitely pleasant. It was a little as though she had been standing out in the cold, shivering and pulling her cloak tight about her to battle the winds buffeting at her, but now had entered a nice warm house with a fire on the hearth. Her aura pushed outward, almost as though it were relaxing somehow, and she felt her shields loosen their grip around her.

She felt his own energy trickle in sighing notes in the crannies and crevices of her own inner currents. It felt _delightful_. She burrowed in a little bit deeper, feeling his spiritual pressure wrap around her more securely and start to caress her through her magic in a way that was indescribably wonderful. Metaphysical caresses, feeling rather like tender currents in a warm bath, slid up and down her tender skin. Her inner magical energy quivered, rousing the magefire within her to seethe and roil beneath her skin, creating sensations inside and outside of her that caused her to tremble and ache. He sighed hotly as he pressed his spiritual pressure in a little harder, pulling and answering call of magic within her body that made her whimper with need.

"Do you? Truly?" he questioned her.

"Do I what?" she breathed at the end of a whimpering moan.

It felt so good. He didn't even need to touch her and she felt her body come alive in ways she could never have managed herself. A soft electrical sensation slid against the tips of her breasts.

"Do you want me to stop?" he asked softly.

Her body shivered when a particularly insistent wave of ephemeral sensation pushed into the currents of her aural field, causing resulting echoes in her body's meridans. Her magefire pressed against her from within, welling up and waking the little pinpoints of pleasure.

"No," she murmured, closing her eyes and allowing her head to loll back against him. "Oh no, _don't_ stop."

"Come here," he murmured, half invitation, half command.

She went to him, already nearly half-drunk on the sensations. She wanted him to _touch_ her, she wanted to feel his beautiful hands against her flesh.

"Since you are so determined in your scholarship," he murmured, arranging their positions so that she was lounged against the back of the reclining couch. "Far be it from me to hinder your studies. I think you will find, however, that your memorization might benefit from some... review."

He slipped a finger underneath the lining of her corset-bottoms and slipped them to the side. Merrill looked down in dismay however, when he ceased to hover over her breasts and made his way downward along her body, pressing his spiritual pressure against her own causing a sensation like a man gently caressing his fingertips against her skin. Her magefire roiled up under the surface to meet his, causing an electric spark in the currents where they met. His spiritual pressure massaged her body with enticing, pleasurable touches in places that made her shiver and come alive. Merrill squirmed as her inner passage started to become wet and slick from the sensations he created within her.

"Open for me," he murmured.

Merrill let her knees fall apart and watched him re-position her legs so that she was spread wide before him. His gaze raked over her, magical pressure skitering along her in a palpable sensation at every nerve ending in every place he looked. Her body was so alive, and so tight with need that she couldn't feel anything but the hunger for his touch. He knelt down low in front of her, face level with her stomach, hands braced on each knee, securing her open position before her.

When his lips touched her left inner thigh the first time, it felt like a spark from a fire had lit against her skin! She gasped as his spiritual pressure roiled against hers, thrusting and sliding against her tender inner thigh with the suckling of his mouth as it traveled upwards. Her core to trembled with the proximity of sensation so very close to her inner flower bud. He stopped just shy of the juncture of her body and turned his attention to the other side where kissed her other thigh, sucking his mouth upwards from the middle of her thigh to the soft join of her leg and pelvis. She moaned in pleasure as the shivers of magic traveled up her though and ghosted along the tips of her nether lips. Pinpoints of electric tingles teased the tips of her outer lips as he hovered there, breathing magic in a maddening phantom touch on the very tip of her.

"Mnhh.." a small demanding noise escaped her as the frustration built up at his avoidance of the area she wanted him, _needed_ him, to focus on.

The sudden tingling thrust of magic past her nether lips and deep down inside of her when he pushed his tongue through her outer lips spread a myriad of dizzying sensations throughout her whole body, rushing outward like a wave. She moaned and would have writhed with wakening pleasure if he had not anchored her body, with his forearms securing her spread thighs. His tongue stroked up along the tender, aching flesh inside of her. Then he sucked at her swollen nub and pressed back downward, teeth trailing along the tips of her outer lips. Magic, like fingertips made of fire pressed all along her inner palace, her body shivered and ached. It was so good, but it wasn't enough, just not quite enough.

"Now," he said, his tone rather conversational for the sort of activity they were engaged in. "Which dividing stroke was that?"

"Huh?" Merrill asked uncomprehendingly, still dizzy with titillation from the meeting of flesh and magic caressing deep within her most secret parts.

"You had claimed that you were having difficulties telling one character from another. A review of the basics on forming the characters would probably be of assistance to you," he said helpfully.

There was a _gleam_ in his eyes however...

"Since it is clear you were not paying attention," he said in a slightly mocking tone. It seems that I must perform the stroke again."

Merrill whimpered when his tongue swept past her lips and, with a shallow swipe, teased her clitoris by an small electric touch of magic. The swipe hooked gently to the right on its way upward, then sharply to the left at the tip teasing her clitoris once more and causing her inner walls to tighten in need. Merrill tried to chase down the sensation, only to find that he'd anchored her in place so that he could tease her abominably. He pulled away.

"Which one?" he questioned.

"I-I can't," she breathed as her body ached and she tried to wriggle back into him. "Please..."

"If you cannot manage even the simplest ones, there's really no point in continuing," he replied, even as he sent an electric tingle of magic to tease her along her outer lips just over the point of her swollen clitoris. It was agony. It was amazing. Her whole body felt hot and tense, her skin and magic reached desperately but he denied her what she sought.

"Come now, I chose and easy one for you," he teased.

"It's a cloud-wave stroke!" she gasped as he made as though to move away.

"Very good," he said in approval. "And what is it called properly? In elven, if you please."

Merrill obediently murmured the word she knew for 'cloud' an 'wave' in Dalish. Solas _tsked_ at her, even as he kissed her other thigh casually.

"You have mispronounced it, but that is hardly your fault," he told her. "It is correctly pronounced thusly."

The liquid feeling of the language as he spoke it deep into her core with sound and magic growled through her like a summer storm. Merrill lay back and closed her eyes, just letting herself feel the words rumble through her body. Her magefire echoed it, shouting it in shivering pleasure along her inner pathways and her body tingled and throbbed.

"What is the word?" he prompted a moment later.

Clumsily, Merrill tried to echo the magic of the word in her aura as she spoke the sounds out loud.

"A credible reproduction," he allowed with a small note of approval. "Let us continue."

Merrill wasn't certain how much more she could take but before she could gather enough wits to complain his tongue and magic drove itself into her body once more, flickering this way and that, dragging agonizingly ecstatic sensations against her skin and pulling moans of increasing pleasure from her. Her body tightened as pleasure built within her.

"Oh yes," she moaned again as his tongue struck a particularly sensitive spot. "Oh... oh..."

He stopped. Merrill could have killed him. When she opened her eyes and looked down he was looking right back up at her from over the plains of her belly and breasts, a _definite_ gleam of mischief in his eyes. He knew precisely what he was doing to her. Prat.

"And which dividing stroke is that?" he asked in the most pedantic tones.

"You demon!" she growled back at him. "You're doing this on purpose!"

"Finish your lessons properly, and I promise you the reward will be worth it," he replied.

His tone and manner were utterly mild and unruffled, as though they were discussing noting of greater consequence than the weather, but there was this _look_ about him. He was enjoying himself.

"Sand-wave is the stroke, as if you didn't know," Merrill muttered pettishly.

It had just been getting _good_ , too!

"In elven," he corrected her sternly, tapping the inner flesh of her thigh softly in admonishment.

Merrill replied in Dalish, and once again, he corrected her and had her repeat the true word, said in both breath and magic, back to him. She'd had to try twice more before she'd got it right and all the while he continued to toy with her, distracting her with ephemeral sensations against her skin that made her want to close her eyes and rub herself until she came properly. Only when he was satisfied with her "pronunciation" did he continue on to the next stroke in his torturous review.

There were nine basic heaven-and-earth strokes, which were what Merrill called "dividing strokes" that divided compound characters left and right. There were thirteen sea-and-stone stokes which went cross-wise from right to left and divided compound characters top and bottom. Most compound characters employed at least one of each.

:Does he truly intend for me to review them all?" she wondered distantly through a haze of pleasure as Solas licked deep inside of her, trailing tingling magic in his wake, writing the heaven and earth stroke "encircling-wave" into the crevices of her body.

Her body was agonizingly tight with need, her hearbeat fluttered her magic was a storm within her and she could barely breathe! Just one more little nudge would be all she'd need to topple over the edge. Sadly, he seemed quite determined to deny her that nudge and with a teasing little suckle on her aching nub ended the stroke. Merrill was by this point, panting with excruciating hunger.

"I don't have a word for that one," Merrill snapped when he had finished. "Nor most of the others. I call it the leftward squiggly-shaped one."

Quite surprise, Solas burst out into a laugh, his magic rippling with exquisite pleasure all over her body as it echoed through where their auras met. She could feel his surprise echo through his magical aura where it had enmeshed with her own. His mind was still shielded and opaque to her, but she had surprised an unexpected laugh from him, and his delight and amusement echoed into her. Solas gamely kissed over her inner lips and murmured the word she sought into the mouth of her opening, squeezing his magic up within her tightened passage and expanding outward to rub pleasingly against her slick walls. Merrill let out her breath in a rush as though she'd been punched, eyes heavy-lidded and whole body watery but somehow still primed with need. It wasn't quite the release she sought, but it was close enough to give her some relief from the excruciating pleasure he called up within her.

"I trust you can mange to repeat afer me," he prompted, kissing away from her center and down along her inner right thigh.

She repeated the word, or a close approximation to it, mostly so that he would get to moving on with the next. He rewarded her with a soft suckle on her sleeping bud, bringing teeth and tongue to tease and please her. His tongue worked deep inside of her, magic tickling about as Merrill grew helplessly wetter and more aroused. Teased beyond even her sheath's ability to control her magic, her lowest inner shield dropped. The seal of her san'shii'an trembled as magefire pushed through her, racing like wildfire along the flowpaths connected to it that san'shii'an. Magic from her lowest inner gateway, the one associated with survival and pleasure, leaked out into her aura. This caused her inner magefire to rush through the pathways of her meridians in a manner that rather resembled what happened to a dry riverbed once the floodgates had been loosed. The slickness lining her intimate places became saturated with hot, needy magefire from the innermost parts of her. The slick fluid _warmed_ when her magic joined it, causing a slow, deep feeling of pleasure to underwrite the passionate fire that he'd already roused in her. Solas must have approved of teh magical saturation along her inner flower, for he licked and suckled at the walls inside of her as though suddenly presented with a honey-treat. She squirmed a bit as her body started to tighten again with unfulfilled sensations, but he anchored her legs open and sucked harder, tongue delving quite determinedly at her inner passage, flicking in and up to clean her of her juices.

The spiritual pressure that had been like a light caress tickling all through her own weak magical aura suddenly... thickened. It wove through her aural currents like warp wove through weft, then tightened almost demandingly, sliding and rubbing in rhythmic enticement as though he meant to fuck her with his magic. It had the same sort of overwhelming dizzy sensation that Merrill got when she removed her sheath from around her san'shii'an, like her whole body and every perception she had was flooded with overpowering magic. This time however, there was no headache, only her body being treated to pleasure mounting upon pleasure as he slid his magic in through her aura and pressed it like a lovers caress deep within her. She moaned and would have writhed had he not been pinning her hips securely, with her legs splayed wide open while he licked and sucked on her. The aching center of her flower throbbed and tightened, and she moaned louder, encouraging him to give her just that last thing she needed. She was nearly _there,_ at the edge...

He pulled back away again and Merrill glared when he smirked back up at her.

"I suppose that will suffice for the heaven and earth strokes," he said. "Now we shall review the sea and stone strokes."

"Beast!" she snapped at him. "You really are terrible."

"How rude," he chided her, suckling her right thigh up near her hip. "I can assure you, that I finish what I start, so long as you do the same. Now, next vallan."

He delved his tongue back into her and flicked the tip to one side, drawing a line right to left then another downward that swerved in a meandering way back inward. Merrill, utterly lost to pleasure, drew a blank. Right at that moment, she was so close to the edge she couldn't have answered him if he had asked her what her name was. All she could do was whimper with need, a want he denied.

"Well?" he prompted.

She stared back uncomprehendingly at him, drunk on desire. She couldn't remember quite what words were right then, and instinctively shaped an answer with her meridians that expanded outwards into her aura. Little connections she hadn't known existed flared into brilliant life as she communicated with him on a level of pure magic. She felt his approval echo back into her through the small, dim connection they shared through their magical auras.

"Ah, you _are_ a quick study..." he said.

He followed this up with a long string of liquid syllables in ancient elven that Merrill did not understand with her ears and yet still had a vague sense of. She sent a little more of her inner magefire to bleed out into her aura, thickening it, then experimentally slid her "fingers" against his own sure, certain grip. Little sparks of lightning-like magic flared at the points where their auras wove together and his breathing hitched a bit. She pressed harder, sending through the ghost-like echoing sensations of the pleasure he had given to her so that he could feel it.

"Perhaps _too_ quick a study," he gasped a moment later.

Merrill rather did like the tickly little sensations she felt when she pressed her own pleasure into him and felt it echo back to her, like a candle between two mirrors multiplying and image. She closed her eyes and cupped her breasts with her hands, flickering out tingles against the sensitive nubs and then spinning out those electric tingling touches through her aura to interact with him and touch him inside his own magic.

"If you aim to teach me, you shouldn't complain if I learn quickly," she murmured softly, moving her hands down her body and pushing her spiritual pressure back against his in a hungry, squeezing caress. She tested this new ability he'd shown her, testing and probing his magic with her own. She could feel the true strength of his spiritual pressure locked safely away behind sheilds, burning like a distant, minature sun, but the magic that leaked out into hie aural feild and slid against her own was like a wonderful song that she somehow knew the notes to. Her own magic attuned to the song and theresonance built between them heightened everything in ways she had never imagined. She explored his energy, tasting it, feeling it.

Without quite knowing how she knew, Merrill slid her ephemeral "fingers" gently around the thick, tightly woven aural presence centered around his cock, squeezing inward and sliding up and down with her own magic, causing a small maelstrom where their differing magic-fields met and rubbed along and among each other. She could feel his pleasure echoing back into her just as it had before, this time it was clearer and she drank in the sensations, hoping to feel him come again, hoping to feel what he'd made her feel that day again. He wove tendrils of magic through hers as one might intertwine their fingers together and then guided her magic along, showing her precisely how he liked it done. Nothing loathe, Merrill squeezed and pleasured him, delighting in the feeling of his own pleasure, echoing back into her body, tickling along her core.

"Fenhedis!" he cursed, his magic welling through her own aura with such intensity that it was very nearly painful.

His fingertips dug hard into her inner thighs and he drove his head back down and attacked her clitoris with his teeth and tongue, causing a sound to emerge from her that was part squeak of surprise and part cry of ecstasy.

"Don't stop, please," she begged without shame as she rode the agonizing tide of ecstasy as it took her higher. She pushed almost frantically at the area around his cock with her own magical energy, stroking and squeezing with everything she had in her.

A soft grunting groan emerged, quite without his consent, from deep within his throat. He closed his eyes and panted a bit then touched his tongue tantalizingly to the tips of her inner lips. A single jolt of raw magic shot straight into her clitoris as he roughly assaulted it with his tongue and teeth causing a loud, pleasured moan that was very nearly a scream to burst from deep within her. His spiritual pressure pushed in _hard_ , inside of her and all around her. Lightning bolts of ecstasy so intense that it bordered on pain burst outward in a white wave. She lost all sense of time and place in the excruciating pleasure of the moment. She flew apart, every bit of her disintegrating into something amazing. Intense sensory pleasure that she would have found impossible to describe in mere words carried her upwards, making her forget that she was a physical being and not a single transcendent sensation echoing on into eternity. She felt him there with her, drinking her in. She sensed his pleasure at the sweet taste of her nectar and his own delighted apex ripple along and through her as he enjoyed her sex.

Slowly the tide of pleasure ebbed. Merrill felt like she rejoined her body to discover that everything had come back together in ways that didnt feel quite like they had before. Solas played within the ripples of her fading pleasure and she caressed him back, enjoying the lingering sensations of pleasure from him. He began to extricate himself from where he had woven their magic together, separating them back into the loneliness of two rather than the intensity of one. Merrill felt a small bit of sadness at the loss, and looked mournfully at him.

"Do not look so sadly, my pet," he murmured from where he lay tiredly face-down in her lap.

Part of him rested on the lounger between her spread legs and part of him knelt on the floor of his library. His hands slid down from where they'd anchord her thighs apart and slid up to caress her skin.

"We may continue our lessons presently," he added. "Considering the speed at which you learn, it would be a great shame not to expand your vocabulary."

"Oh," she said, suddenly hit blindside by a rush of sleepiness in the wake of their little session. "That's nice then."

She lay sprawled, heavy-limbed with pleasure, half-clothed on the lounger while Solas straightened his appearance to neatness once more, though his flushed face and uncanny, glowing eyes might have given him away to anyone bursting in on them. He rearranged her limbs for her so that she was not sprawled open before him like an invitation and politely tucked her corset bottoms back over so that her lowest san'shii'an was ensheathed once again.

"You... continue to surprise me, Merrill," he said with a strange note of honesty in his voice.

"I know you couldn't have been expecting me to ambush you that day. I surprised myself that I even dared risk it," Merrill replied, still a bit embarrassed by her forwardness.

No," he said gently. "That wasn't to what I was referring. I had formed an opinion of the Dalish that was... not very flattering. You challenge that opinion. I had formed an assessment of all elves of the current era but in light of what I have learned from you just now, it seems I may need to reassess the conclusions I have reached."

"That's nice," she said sleepily. "A true scholar is always willing to challenge their world-view. Will we have more lessons soon?"

"I find I must... reflect, on what all of this means," he said softly. "I will keep my promise to you to teach you proper elven calligraphy. We will talk presently about expanding your language lessons."

Merrill subsided, content with his promise and still worn out from thier... whatever that had been. Curiously, she reached out with her spiritual pressure as she had just learned to do, and pressed a soft, peck of a kiss against his aura. He blinked at her in surprise and Merrill closed her eyes and allowed herself to drift off to sleep, leaving him behind as she entered the Fade. In her dreams however, she could have swore she felt a soft, lingering kiss in reply.


End file.
